Australia Oceania category: 2401 books

The Birth of Melbourne is a spectacular anthology of contemporary writings giving a vivid insight into the history of Melbourne. In 1835 John Batman sailed up the Yarra and was astonished by the beauty of the land. It was a temperate Kakadu, teeming with wildlife and with soils rich enough...

When a masked and cloaked bandit robbed the bank at a small gold town in 1869 he created the legend of Captain Moonlite, the gun-toting man of God who enthralled and appalled the nation for more than a decade. Real name Andrew George Scott, he is remembered as bushranger, conman, warrior and...

**The social history of New Zealand's gold rushes, as used by Eleanor Catton in her research for The Luminaries.**A thorough and carefully researched history of the gold rushes in New Zealand. Based on sound scholarship and aimed at the general reader it's accessibly written in a clear, clean and...

Antarctic Diaries of the Heroic Era Imperfect records yet the best available as exemplified by the 1911-1913 Antarctic Diary of Charles Turnbull Harrisson, Western Base party, Australasian Antarctic Expedition The centenary of the departure of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE), celebrated...

On September 2, 1845, the convict ship Tasmania left Kingstown Harbour for Van Diemen's Land, with 138 female convicts and their 35 children. On December 3, the ship arrived into Hobart. While the book looks at the lives of all the women, it focuses on two women in particular; Eliza Davis, who was...

Between the 1840s and 1880s, thousands of young single women came to New Zealand as assisted migrants from Britain and Ireland. In this detailed study of forgotten lives, Charlotte Macdonald highlights the experiences and identities of a vitally important migrant group, one previously overshadowed by...

Outlining the career of one of New Zealand’s most distinguished fiction writers and sharpest critics, this fascinating narrative details the life and work of Bill Pearson. Beginning with his difficult childhood in a society dominated by the New Zealand working man, this gripping biography follows...

From the mid-19th-century rivalry between the New Zealander and the Southern Cross to the 20th-century dominance of the New Zealand Herald and the Auckland Star, the story of Auckland's newspapers is an engrossing battle of wits that reveals much about the history of the people and the press in New...

Written by a former managing editor who is also a distinguished writer, this book charts the origins of the Auckland University Press up to its formal recognition in 1972. It provides a valuable document in the history of the book in New Zealand, an intriguing view of university politics and administration, and glimpses of New Zealand culture in the making.

Melville’s continuing adventures in the South Seas Following the commercial and critical success of Typee, Herman Melville continued his series of South Sea adventure-romances with Omoo. Named after the Polynesian term for a rover, or someone who roams from island to island, Omoo chronicles...

A new edition of this bestselling Australian classic. After the Japanese invasion of Burma in late 1941, 11-year-old Colin McPhedran was forced to flee his homeland on foot, across the steep Patkoi Mountain Ranges, to safety in India. Over a three-month period, Colin, along with his mother, elder...

Arawata Bill (18651947) was a pioneering folk hero. He spent decades in the unforgiving mountain country of New Zealands South Island, prospecting for gold and other minerals and making new tracks in unexplored areas. His astonishing feats of endurance and tenacity, coupled with his charming eccentricity,...

Two husbands, four trials and one bloody execution: Winner of the 2015 Davitt Award for Best Crime Book (Non-fiction) -- the terrible true story of Louisa Collins. In January 1889, Louisa Collins, a 41-year-old mother of ten children, became the first woman hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol and the...

A major biography of arguably New Zealand's greatest modern political leaderAs Norman Kirk's body lay in state near the steps of Parliament on the day after his death on 31 August 1974, a kaumatua wailed 'the mighty totara has fallen'. The lament reflected what many New Zealanders felt about this...